Perfect timing, Donald

Trump’s budding romance with Putin can quickly degenerate from worrying to catastrophic. Actually, a step in that direction has just been made.

The US is lifting the latest raft of sanctions on the FSB/KGB, which will enable American high-tech companies to sell computers to that sinister organisation.

(The Times seems to think that the B in FSB stands for ‘bureau’. It doesn’t. It’s the initial of the Russian for ‘security’ – ‘bezopasnost’, as in Federal’naia Sluzhba Bezopasnosti. Our papers’ ignorance is most refreshing.)

Now I’ve expressed restrained misgivings about this Trump-Putin foreplay before. The misgivings have been based on:

Trump’s frequent – and reciprocated – words of admiration for Putin; Trump’s son’s admission that “a disproportionate amount” of the family’s income comes from Russia; Trump’s campaign staff packed to the gunwales with chaps enjoying lucrative links with Russia (one of them has just become Secretary of State); the FSB’s attempts to sabotage the US elections in Trump’s favour by computer hacking; Trump’s reference to Nato as ‘obsolete’; unconcealed joy in the Duma over Trump’s victory and indecent triumphalism in Putin’s media celebrating the ascent of “our man”.

The restraint has come from the fact that none of the above amounts to prima facie evidence of Trump’s complicity in any FSB wrongdoing. Nor can he be held responsible for Russia’s reaction to his victory.

Deeds, not words, give clues to a politician’s mind, character and intentions. Trump’s words about Putin’s kleptofascist junta could be put down to his manifest ignorance. After all, even more learned men than Trump (Peter Hitchens, Norman Stone and Christopher Booker, to name a few) have said asinine things about Putin. My refrain has been let’s wait and see what the president actually does.

We haven’t had to wait long: the lifting of sanctions against the FSB is a deed all right, and a foul one at that. What’s offensive about this unilateral action, at odds with the policy of every American ally, isn’t just ‘what’ but also ‘when’.

For the news has come in a week when Putin’s rockets and heavy artillery pound the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, killing hundreds and leaving thousands without water, electricity and a roof over their heads (in -20C frosts).

In another development, Putin’s opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza, 35, is on death’s door in hospital suffering from poisoning. His internal organs are failing, and tests show that his body contains an abnormally high concentration of the heavy metals inaccessible to private individuals.

This is the second such attack on Kara-Murza. The first one occurred in 2015, when he stayed in a coma for a week and then underwent treatment for several months. Roughly at the same time Kara-Murza’s friend Boris Nemtsov was shot dead a few feet away from the Kremlin. It’s not a great stretch to connect these events, and also the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, with the FSB and Putin personally.

Finally, our defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon yesterday delivered scathing comments about Russia, specifically about FSB hacking. In the past two years, Fallon said, Russia has targeted the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Montenegro.

“Today we see a country that, in weaponising misinformation, has created what we might now see as the post-truth age. Part of that is the use of cyber-weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery,” added Sir Michael.

Speaking on behalf of Britain and other American allies in Europe, Sir Michael threatened retaliation in no uncertain terms. His speech amounted to a declaration of electronic war, and quite right too. I for one can’t see any valid difference between “disrupting critical infrastructure” by hacking and doing so by aerial bombardment.

Now let’s see. First, Russia is attacking the West with electronic weapons. Second, such warfare requires state-of-the-art computers. Third, Russia is incapable of producing such hardware and therefore has to import it. Fourth, the West therefore has a vital interest in not exporting such computers to Russia.

All right so far? Well, then Trump’s allowing US firms to sell electronic equipment to history’s most murderous organisation, showing no signs of mending its ways, is… Choose your own predicative. Stupid? Irresponsible? Crass? Criminal? Just about any one will work, or a combination of several.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s advisable to maintain civilised relations with a country possessing more nuclear warheads than the US, no matter how objectionable we may find it. But to merit such treatment, Russia has to act in a civilised way.

Instead it’s clearly on the warpath, creating all over the world troubled waters in which Russia can profitably fish. There are only two ways of dealing with such escalating hostility: firm resistance or weak-kneed appeasement.

Trump’s decision suggests he prefers the second way, which, in the light of modern history, is grounds for serious criticism. And if he’s appeasing Putin for some ulterior motive, that’s grounds for summary impeachment and probably imprisonment – regardless of how wonderful a president he may be in every other respect.

Appeasing Putin today, for whatever reason, is likely to produce the same effect as appeasing Hitler did 79 years ago. America didn’t manage to sit out the ensuing carnage then – and neither will it be able to this time. Isolationists and interventionists will be dying together in the same trenches.